Daughters of mothers

I grew up with my mother, my grandmother and my great-grandmother - these three women have had the greatest influence on my life. My mother Magdalena had paranoid schizophrenia and was in and out of hospital. My grandmother was helpless. My great-grandmother was my biggest help until she died when I was 13 and I lost my main support during a turbulent time.

My father was also part of this difficult family situation. He was deluded and believed in conspiracy theories, which intensified during the coronavirus pandemic. However, he has never received a formal psychiatric diagnosis. The contact with him was very stressful and I had to stop seeing him for a while because our communication just didn't work.

The parent-child role between me and my parents has always been reversed - also known as parentification. My parents often couldn't or didn't want to take on their parental roles, so I ended up taking on this responsibility because I had no other choice. I took it on because I felt I wanted to give direction to what was happening. It meant looking after my sick parents, organising the household and never being able to rely on them being there when I needed them.

Over time, I began to think about the changeability of family roles. I am now in therapy and try to create places of retreat where I can reclaim my role as a daughter. Something has changed, especially with my father. I had stopped communication with him for a while, but recently I reversed this to see how he would react. We now consciously talk about things that connect us, such as nature conservation and woodworking - subjects in which he, as a carpenter, has a lot of experience. But if the conversation drifts into problematic areas, I stop it to maintain my boundaries – however this has not happened for a long time now, and that feels like a small step forward.

My relationship with my father is still difficult but loving. He tries to see me as a daughter and can be fatherly when I am not well. I recently wrote to him about my sadness about many societal developments. He said that I am an especially sensitive person, which he is as well. He concluded that he needed to take special care of me and be mindful with me. That was nice to hear, and we were able to experience something new together, and something was healing. Nevertheless, our relationship remains reduced, but such moments feel like a loving father-daughter relationship.

It had not been like that before. My father lived in the countryside, and we only saw each other during the summer months or at Christmas, when he sold wooden toys at markets. When I was 12, he told me that he now saw me as an adult. At the time I didn't find that uncomfortable, but now I find it problematic. He was giving me responsibilities and pushing me into things that children should be protected from. He saw me as the 'sensible' daughter and took little responsibility himself, which was ultimately part of his illness.

I now have a great deal of understanding for the stresses he experienced in his own childhood. As the eldest son, he had to take over the family farm and his father was a very strict man. But my father is a very sensitive person, and I think he didn't want to behave the way his father did. Nevertheless, he didn't know what it meant to be a father and to protect me from making bad choices. He saw me as an independent child and didn't realise how overburdened I often was.

This ability to put myself in someone else's shoes helps me to understand many of his reactions. But it also makes it difficult to draw the line when I have to give him the responsibility for his behaviour. I try to remind myself that I am not responsible for his illness, but I don't always succeed. However, I have now learned to manage my sensitivity and have built up a support network of understanding people with whom I can be honest.

By comparison, little has changed with my mother. She is much more limited than my father because of her illness, and I still have many responsibilities towards her. It's hard for me to draw the line, but I try to stay in my daughter's role and look for moments when she can actually be motherly. Once, when I was with her and crying, she asked me if I needed a handkerchief. In that moment she was able to come out of her 'captivity' and offer me something. Moments like that are rare, but they are important. She is often slow to respond to my needs. If I tell her I have a headache, she takes minutes to ask if I need an aspirin. She hears voices when she is psychotic and then becomes completely withdrawn. It is difficult to always know the right time to visit her without using too much of my own resources.

I have learnt to consciously decide when to take on the role of helper. My mother has a social worker, and I often delegate things to the social worker when I feel overwhelmed. But I don't want to abandon my mother completely. I help her organise her care and always make sure that I can help her emotionally and practically.

When I was young, I had surrogate parents like uncles and aunts to support me. It was important that they were there, even though their help was often tied to conditions. I always had to show my gratitude very clearly for these relationships to last. There was no room for 'youthful recklessness' if I didn't want to lose their closeness. 

And here's something else I can highly recommend for finding a bit of stability: cats.